3:34PM: Laviolette confirmed again that the lines and defense pairs will be different tomorrow.
10AM: The Rangers have signed defenseman Adam Clendening,30, to a PTO. Clendening was with the Rangers in 2016-17, scoring two goals and 9 assists in 31 games.
Last season he had 24 points in 48 games for Rockford in the AHL and 9 points in 20 games for Hartford.
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9:38 AM: The first group of Rangers on the ice today skated on the following lines (Brooks):
- Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreniere
- Artemi Panarin, Filip Chytil, Blake Wheeler
- Barclay Goodrow, Vincent Trocheck, Kaapo Kakko
- Jimmy Vesey, Nick Bonino, Tyler Pitlick
- K’Andre Miller, Adam Fox
- Ryan Lindgren, Jacob Trouba
- Erik Gustafsson, Braden Schneider
- ZacJones, Ben Harpur
Peter Laviolette said on Wednesday that the lines today will likely not be the same lines tomorrow.
Adam Rotter: That pretty much looks like the opening night roster, minus Jones and Harpur. How all those players get shifted around remains to be seen, but it’s not impossible that this is the formation the Rangers will go with to start the year.
There are some changes to the status quo. Fox and Lindgren are broken up, Filip Chytil and Vincent Trocheck are swapped and Alexis Lafreniere is on the right on the top line. The Kid Line is completely blown up with one member on each of the top three lines. It’s different and maybe the team needs something different. I’d still prefer to see Kakko in the top-six and his experience with Chytil could make the transition to playing with Panarin easier for both of them, but it’s also the first real day on the ice in training camp. We’ll see what the lines look like tomorrow.